The dawn chorus was no more than a quartet before there was stirring in the camp; a horse galloped through the half-light and scudded to a halt under the window. Hasty footsteps went to the door, and admittance was sought and gained. Not long afterwards, with the objects in the chamber as yet colourless, a page came in and summoned the ladies to the Queen. She was already dressed, if indeed she had undressed, and her armourer was strapping on the steel corselet she had had made when the conflict between York and Lancaster first flared into war. She gave no good morning to her attendants beyond the curt remark, ‘The usurper is drawing up his men in battle order. We must fight.’
An early mist like swathes of white muslin lay across the meadows, and on all sides soldiers were wading through it knee-high to take up their positions. Margaret mounted the tall black mare held ready for her and Anne, almost crippled by stiffness from yesterday’s ride, scrambled ungracefully into the saddle of a palfrey. From her new vantage point she could see the clear ground fretted with ditches where they had rested the day before, and beyond that, in the direction of Gloucester, another body of men. There too standards and lances were manoeuvring, and she realised with a stab of horror that it was the Yorkist army.
The Lancastrian captains approached, gallant mounted figures in full armour and emblazoned surcoats, their helmets carried behind them by their squires. While the Prince of Wales trotted forward to embrace his mother, the other lords saluted her formally. Then, urging her horse past them, the Queen led the way to the centre of the battle line which was just forming out of the confusion. She wheeled to face her troops, and reached back to take the Prince’s hand. Over her breastplate she was wearing a great purple mantle, which was spread in opulent folds over the mare’s crupper; it was fastened with a gold chain, and on her wedding finger was an emerald set about with diamonds which she had kept from the pawnbroker. Her dark eyes, which had of late held only fierce determination, glowed as she surveyed her son, who was caparisoned as bravely as she. She spoke to Lord Wenlock, but her voice carried over the suddenly hushed men.
‘My lord, in token of our trust, we place at your side our most precious hope, and the future of England. The Prince of Wales shall share with you the command of our centre.’
As Wenlock acknowledged the honour the front ranks brandished their weapons and cheered, and the cry of ‘Edward! Edward!’ rolled back to the rearguard and out to the flanks of the army. When the shouting subsided, a mocking echo of it drifted to them from the south: the Yorkist army also were acclaiming their leader. The Queen, pulling in her mare’s head so sharply that the animal snorted in protest, turned to Anne.
‘Salute your husband, madame.’ The palfrey was much smaller than Edward’s grey war-horse. Anne stared up at the Prince and wondered what one said on such occasions. He had no wish to say anything and, as at their first meeting, he avoided her gaze. At length, impelled by an impatient gesture from his mother, he leaned over, touched his cheek to hers, and gratefully left her. Humiliated yet again by her husband’s open antipathy, she retired into the anonymity of the Queen’s ladies. The Queen and the Prince were embracing and speaking many words to each other. It was now full daylight, and southwards drums were beating insistently. With a final handclasp, Margaret drove her spurs into the mare and set a furious pace back over the meadows.
A boat was waiting for them near the confluence of the Severn and Avon. Anne and the ladies-in-waiting clambered in eagerly, but the Queen hung back. Behind them a cannonade had begun, and the boatmen stood ready to cast off. The Queen was arguing with the gentlemen who had escorted her to the river, and ever casting glances back towards the belt of trees which hid the battleground. They prevailed at last and handed her on board. The broad stream flowed swiftly as the oarsmen pulled across the current. Now that the danger was less immediate Anne was seized by impotent panic. From her seat in the stern the farther bank was impossibly distant, and the fear of pursuing Yorkists pouring on to the eastern shore prickled down her back. Not so her mother-in-law. She faced the side they had left; her lips moved, but in nothing as mechanical as prayer, and in her face was such naked yearning that Anne shrank from it. This evidence of frailty in one so indomitable utterly unnerved her.
Their refuge was a small monastery, which Margaret at once began to convert into a military outpost. She herself took over a chamber which looked towards the river, and although she could see neither the water nor the engagement which must have joined beyond it, she returned to the deep embrasure constantly. Having deployed her few men, she had come to the end of her resources. She had done her utmost, and it was left to others to conclude the business. Soon after the lay brothers had borne away the dinner platters one of the Queen’s messengers came in, breathless and jubilant. He had spoken to one of Somerset’s archers, who reported that the Duke had routed the left wing of the Yorkists by a cunning circling movement.
‘Gloucester’s men are in flight, and the fellow said the field was as good as ours already.’ Margaret’s eyes glittered, and she gave the courier a mark from a purse which was almost empty, but she did not speak. In her years of campaigning she had seen too many twists of fortune to believe in such an easy victory. He went back to his post and his mistress resumed her pacing.
Anne was in the corner; no one had marked her indrawn breath when Gloucester was mentioned, or the way she retreated further from the light. She told herself without conviction that it was the contingent from the city of Gloucester the messenger meant, but beneath ran the cold certainty that it was not so. Richard was there, not a mile away, giving ground before the inexorable advance of her husband. The false report of his drowning had perhaps only been to prepare her for this. In an automatic gesture she had not used for a long time she touched the place between her breasts where their talisman had hung. But it was gone. She had no claim on him, not even the right to pray for his safety. If he died, it would be without sparing a thought for her. With her hand pressed to the memory of the pendant, she sat quietly and suffered. Roaming the chamber in tigerish frustration, Margaret suffered too.
The stillness outside was uncanny. Bells rang for Tierce, and again a barren three hours later for Sexte. There was no hint that across the river thousands of men were struggling bloodily for the mastery of England. Only a knot of tense silent women in the guest-house and a few wary retainers patrolling outside. Not until the afternoon did anything else happen. There was a commotion outside the door and one of Margaret’s French bodyguard shuffled in, hauling behind him the draggled caricature of an archer. He manhandled the creature before the Queen, where it collapsed in a sodden heap. More formally, the man-at-arms kneeled beside it, keeping a firm grip on its collar.
‘Madame, he came across the river. He was trying to desert.’ Margaret looked down at the shivering archer with distaste. ‘Whom does he serve?’
‘My lord of Devon, madame. I could not understand any more.’ The dowager Countess of Devon started up with an inarticulate cry, and subsided.
‘Well, fellow,’ the Queen said in English, ‘speak for yourself. I am your Queen. Why have you left the field?’ He raised his head, shook it, and mumbled something unintelligible. Rivulets of water ran down his face, mixed on one temple with a streak of blood. His eyes were popping with terror. ‘Speak more clearly, or you will be whipped into plain words.’ Making an effort, he repeated himself. The Queen threw out a hand impatiently. ‘Can anyone tell what he is saying?’
‘He says, “They’re coming, we must run.”’ It was Anne who interpreted in a small voice; there had been a groom in her father’s service from Bideford.
‘What does the wretch mean? Ask him!’ Margaret ordered, terse with foreboding. The man rolled his eyes towards Anne like a sick dog as she came forward. His breath stank of onions. In a neutral tone she translated his dialect.
‘He swam the river. The current nearly swept him away. He wants to go home.’ With sudden weak urgency, he raised himself on one elbow and with the other hand clutched at Anne’s skirt.
They all understood the word he gasped.
‘Drink!’ Anne recoiled, snatching her gown out of his muddy fist with disgust. One of the ladies proffered at arm’s length a cupful of the thin ale left over from their dinner, and he grabbed it and gulped it down noisily, smacking his lips. With renewed strength he beckoned to Anne, who did not this time come so close, and told the rest of his story. There was no more fighting, only killing, and everyone was trying to run away from the Yorkists. Most had been cut down in the meadows where the Avon barred their escape, and many of those who tried to cross had not been able to swim. The Devon man had gone another way, and hidden in the rushes until he could launch himself unseen across the wider river.
‘And now we must all run away, mistress. King Edward will murder us all if he catches us.’ Hoisting himself on to all fours, he peered earnestly up at the Queen, dimly aware that she was the most important person present.
She was drawn up very still, staring at the wall, and a nervous tic was plucking at the corner of her mouth.
‘This man is a liar,’ she said quietly. ‘The usurper has sent him to deceive us.’ Nobody spoke, and the Frenchman shifted uneasily on his knees. She stooped abruptly and seized the archer by the wet forelock, forcing his head back. ‘Where ... is … the ... Prince?’ she asked with slow precision. He flinched from her intensity and gabbled a jumble of words that not even Anne could distinguish, except for the recurring phrase, ‘I don’t know.’ Margaret let him go and he subsided to the floor again. His head-wound had reopened and thick crimson blood was oozing through his hair.
‘Take him away,’ she said through her teeth. Her bodyguard was about to ask for further instructions, but he thought better of it and retreated as hurriedly as he could with the exhausted fugitive.
The unnatural silence descended, and for a moment the Queen gazed down at the dark damp patch on the flagstones. Then she made for the door, and without waiting for an attendant she flung it open and strode outside. Drawn mindlessly after, the other women followed, through the gatehouse where the porter gaped at them, down the slope among the scattered trees towards the river. Margaret’s men, no longer on guard, were in a huddle by an elm tree, all looking one way. The midday sun was invisible, but the willows on the far side of the grey Severn were clearly defined. Even from here no sound except the birds, but among the trees there was movement, as though the bank were swarming with insects. Transfixed, the men-at-arms and the ladies watched, until two of the insects broke into full view. Swaying for an instant on the brink of the water, there was a gleam of steel, a distant cry and a splash, and the bank was empty again. Margaret roused first, rounding sharply on her idle bodyguard.
‘Why have you left your posts? Go back at once. Do you wish the Prince to find you unprepared when he comes?’ She turned on her heel and went towards the gatehouse. The men, lingering together, exchanged glances and did not immediately obey her orders.
Once more they were penned up in the guest-chamber, with no sound but the fall of the Queen’s restless feet. Sick and lightheaded from lack of sleep, Anne dozed on the uncomfortable bench where she sat, and started awake to the Queen’s bulky figure crossing and recrossing the window. Over all there was the persistent beat of horses’ hoofs, the rumbling of wagons and the scuffing tread of hundreds of soldiers, all jumbled up with the present and the recent past.
A man stood in the room, although she had not seen him enter. Her sluggish memory placed him slowly. It was William Joseph, one of the Queen’s secretaries, who had accompanied them to the ferry this morning. The normally sleek hair around his clerk’s tonsure was dishevelled, and there was mud on the hem of his gown.
‘Madame, you must fly. We are lost.’ The Queen had turned from the window, her clenched fist with its great green stone resting on the embrasure, and was looking at Joseph with hostility.
‘I have heard such tales before, from cowards trying to save their own face.’
‘I’m no soldier, madame, so I have no face to lose,’ he replied, with a spark of anger he would not formerly have dared to show. ‘It is all over. King Edward is in Tewkesbury.’
‘But Somerset drove the left wing from the field−’
‘His grace is a prisoner. I was in the abbey with him - it was full of our men seeking sanctuary. The King arrested them all. I only escaped because I have a friend among the brothers who guided me out by a side door.’
‘The King? The usurper ... who profanes holy sanctuary to win his battles.’
‘Please, madame.’ The clerk fell to his knees and took her hand. ‘If we go now we can be away before they begin the search for you. My lord of Pembroke is somewhere near−’
‘No!’ Margaret flung away from him. ‘We shall wait for the Prince. With the men he has saved we can join Pembroke. Why do you shake, your head?’ She wheeled back and glared down at her secretary. ‘Where is the Prince?’
‘I don’t know. All your captains are killed or taken. I didn’t see the lord Prince in the abbey. I fear he−’
‘It is not true,’ she cut trenchantly across his hesitant words. ‘He will come, and I will wait for him. Save yourself if you wish, Master Joseph.’ She thrust out her hand for him to kiss, but when he tried to speak again she silenced him. ‘No more. Go to the refectory for refreshment before you leave.’ There was a concerted cry from Margaret’s ladies, all burning for tidings of their menfolk, and they rose and converged on their mistress and the secretary like a flock of dowdy birds.
Their wings flapped round Anne, shutting out the light, and their anxious babble did not reach her. She needed no further news. The Queen’s defiant blindness had exposed the folly of her own. The Prince of Wales would not come to the succour of the woman who waited for him, and neither would anyone come to hers. She knew that he was dead, and so was her father. This small chamber was adrift in a world devoid of form and shelter. The mighty presence of the Earl of Warwick, which had overshadowed and ordered it since her birth, was gone, and chaos returned.
It was there that Sir William Stanley found them the following day. His armed escort was small, but the Prior made no difficulty about admitting him; he was too prudent a man to defy the officer of a king so decisively and so locally re-seated on the throne. Hearing the chink of armour in the doorway, Queen Margaret whirled from her rigid posture by the window, light leaping into her haggard face.
‘My son!’
‘No, Madame Margaret. Not your son.’ Perhaps because they had been half expecting the visitation there were one or two muffled shrieks among the attendants. But although the light was extinguished, Margaret did not flinch.
‘Do as you will with me, sire. My son will avenge any wrongs I may suffer.’ Stanley laughed, a short sharp bark.
‘I doubt that - unless he can influence the divine judgment from Purgatory.’ Seeing her stand still in wilful incomprehension, he continued with brutal relish. ‘He’s dead, madame. So give up your hopes and go with me to the King.’
There came a low inhuman sound between a moan and a snarl, and even the hard-bitten Sir William almost gave back a pace before the wild rage that suddenly possessed the Queen. The two soldiers outside brought their lances to the ready in case their captain was attacked. But she did not move; the menace was in her hunched shoulders and out-thrust head, like a dangerous beast at bay.
‘It is a foul lie,’ she hissed. With the courage of the lances at his back Stanley contradicted her, a vicious levity in his voice paying her for his moment of fright.
‘No lie. I saw his body myself. Stripped. Three sword wounds, two in the back. But King Edward has ordered Christian burial for him in the abbey, along with all the other traitors.’ She was rocking slightly on her feet, and her eyes had glazed.
‘It is a lie. I will not believe it. He is alive.’
‘My word on it as a gentleman,’ said Stanley curtly, tired of baiting her. ‘Now surrender yourself and go with us. The King wishes you to follow him to Coventry.’
‘I will
not go. Take me to my son.’
‘Come, madame. His grace is merciful and has commanded us to use you with courtesy, but he will be obeyed.’
‘Take me to my son. I will not stir from this place until you swear to do so. Or would you commit more sacrilege by using force in a holy house?’ Her voice was still quiet, but it wavered perilously close to the hysterical. Humanity was not a great virtue of Sir William Stanley, but he balked at the prospect of laying hands on this half crazy woman who had also been his Queen. Moreover, his discovery of her hidingplace would bring him enough credit to allow her a little latitude. His master King Edward did not look kindly on the ill-treatment of women.
They had laid the Prince out in the infirmary of the abbey, along with the other noble corpses that they had not yet had time to bury. The headless bodies of the Lancastrians executed by King Edward after the battle had been first interred; here the slain in action awaited the digging of their graves, with coarse grey sheets drawn over them. The rottenness of putrefaction polluted the atmosphere even at a distance, and the old Countess of Devon, whose son had been killed, staggered and could not go on. Margaret pressed forward, almost sweeping aside the Father Abbot in her impatience. A way was made too for Anne, and she was compelled to follow her mother-in-law. Beside the high cot the Queen halted, motionless, while the Abbot turned down the edge of the sheet. The Prince’s skin, waxen yellow, stretched tight on the bones of the skull, had lost all semblance of youth.
For an eternity the Queen stared down at him, her face as stony as that of her son. Then with a slow terrible gesture she laid hold of the sheet and stripped it from him. Her arms outstretched as though crucified she sank to the floor, and the cry of a forsaken soul shivered on the foul air, a wordless keening that rose to a pitch of agony and sank to the whimper of a wounded animal. Anne looked on, half stupefied by the stench and the horror of what she saw: the bloodless corpse with the livid scar between the ribs; the swollen belly above the pathetically virgin manhood. It was too obscene to be anything but a mockery of life. Margaret had torn off her head-dress and her thick hair, grey streaks among the midnight, spilled over her shoulders. Swaying on her knees she cradled the Prince’s head against her breast. Her hair fell over the deep sockets of his eyes, and all the while she was crooning, a strange primitive lament.
The White Queen of Middleham: An historical novel about Richard III's wife Anne Neville (Sprigs of Broom Book 1) Page 16